A computer font (or fount) is an electronic data file containing a set of glyphs, characters, or symbols such as dingbats. Although the term font once referred to interchangeable typefaces using mechanical components such as a typeball element or a daisy wheel, most modern fonts are used in computing. There are three basic kinds of computer font file data formats:

ˇ Bitmap fonts consist of a series of dots or pixels representing the image of each glyph in each face and size.ˇ Outline fonts use Bézier curves, drawing instructions and mathematical formulas to describe each glyph, which make the character outlines scalable to any size.ˇ Stroke fonts use a series of specified lines and additional information to define the profile, or size and shape of the line in a specific face and size, which together describe the appearance of the glyph.

Bitmap fonts are faster and easier to use in computer code, but inflexible, requiring a separate font for each size and each face. Outline and stroke fonts can be resized using a single font and substituting different measurements for components of each glyph, but are somewhat more complicated to use than bitmap fonts as they require additional computer code to render them. For example, the letter "A" has three components, the two lines on the outside and the bar between the two outside lines, and may have more if the design has serifs.